Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

As I said last night, it has been very hypocritical of this government to have insisted on a national code for the siting and development of wind farms, to make sure that community concerns were taken into consideration, but then to have overridden that with the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill last year, which imposes on the Northern Territory a nuclear waste dump, despite government opposition there and huge community objection to the dump.

In fact, rather than consulting, the government did quite the opposite. The Northern Territory Chief Minister first heard about the decision in a press release from the minister. The Alice Springs council first heard of the proposal on local radio and a property owner right next door to one of the sites found out through a friend.

We continue to hold the view that low-level waste should be stored as close as possible to its production and that state-of-the-art above-ground repositories should be established in each state and territory for this purpose, and we continue our long opposition to the construction of the unnecessary new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights. The Democrats argue that it is imperative to manage Australia’s radioactive waste in a responsible, scientific, robust and transparent manner. To date, the federal government has failed to do that.

The Democrats recognise that radioactive material is a reality and a serious issue, but it is here that our strategy differs from that of the government. We support the strategy advocated by the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, the Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of the Earth. First and foremost, the government must seek to minimise waste generation rather than make plans to expand our nuclear industry. Secondly, the government should aim to minimise transportation. Waste management is preferably done on site in a retrievable and secure fashion. Thirdly, the government should focus on establishing secure, monitored, above-ground storage which responsibly addresses the need to maximise long-term safety and does not preclude any improved storage options which might become available in the future. Fourthly, the government should gain community acceptance of the management system based on the principles promoted by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That does not simply mean consultation; the community must give informed consent to the facility.

On the issue of nuclear stewardship and an expanding nuclear industry in Australia, we believe that the stewardship approach being foreshadowed for Australia flies in the face of global security and is not environmentally or economically sound. A uranium enrichment industry in Australia is also bad news. It is highly energy intensive, contributing further to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, and leaves a massive amount of toxic radioactive and chemical waste. Uranium enrichment in the United States alone releases 14 million tonnes of CO per annum and, for every tonne of natural uranium mined and enriched for use in a nuclear facility, the majority—that is, 87 per cent—is left as waste. The bulk of the by-product is depleted uranium. Despite putting tonnes of DU into weapons used in Afghanistan and Iraq—polluting those countries with dangerous DU dust—the United States still has 470,000 tonnes in store and 1.2 million tonnes are stored around the world.

Expanding uranium mining and enriching uranium in Australia, even with a leasing arrangement, will do absolutely nothing to get rid of the world’s nuclear weapons and will only exacerbate the situation, in our view. Expansion of uranium mining could lead to an increase in the number of nuclear weapons states and the material available for dirty bombs used by terrorist groups. The report Nuclear power: no solution to climate change notes that, of the 60 countries that have built nuclear reactors or nuclear power plants, over 20 are known to have used their so-called peaceful facilities for covert weapons research and/or production. In some cases, nation states have succeeded in producing nuclear weapons under cover of a peaceful nuclear program. They are India, Pakistan, Israel, South Africa and possibly North Korea. The report also notes that the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards system still suffers from flaws and limitations, despite improvements in the past decades. At least eight nuclear non-proliferation treaty member states have carried out weapons related projects in violation of their NPT agreements or have carried out permissible weapons related activities but failed to meet their reporting requirements to the IAEA. Egypt, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Romania, South Korea, Taiwan and Yugoslavia are in this situation.

The Democrats are very concerned about the decision to sell uranium to China because, despite the agreed safeguards, there are no guarantees that China will not use our uranium for weapons or even displace other uranium to do so. We are also concerned about the ongoing talks on the possibility of selling Australian uranium to India, which is not a signatory of the NPT. The provocative move by Korea yesterday in testing a nuclear bomb suggests a very real risk of a nuclear arms race in the region. As has already been noted, the non-proliferation treaty has failed to some extent. There are still 27,000 nuclear weapons worldwide, and the nuclear weapons states have not agreed to disarm, as was expected at the time of signing that treaty. We also have the comprehensive test ban treaty, which is yet to be ratified for want of signatories. This lack of progress on disarmament and on banning testing has no doubt been a factor in North Korea taking up this disastrous testing option.

Australia could and should play a part in not contributing to further regional instability. It should refuse to sell our uranium to nations such as India and China; indeed, we should be using our uranium as leverage over progress on disarmament for the nuclear weapon states. Even our close allies like the United States need to hear the message from Australia that it is not acceptable to go on having so many nuclear weapons and that we must go to total disarmament of nuclear weapons worldwide at some stage. When it comes to nuclear capability in a region already fraught with political tension, it is essential that the government continues to press its concerns peacefully and through all the diplomatic means at its disposal. Most of all, however, the government must abandon its plans to sell uranium to a publicly unstable region.

The Democrats support the second reading amendment by the ALP. The government should be condemned for putting short-term economic gain ahead of national, global, environmental and health security. The government should be investing in renewable energy for export. Innovation in renewable energy products is going overseas—the latest is the Sliver solar cell technology produced by the Australian National University and Origin Energy. It is outrageous and a national shame that this government has failed to support and foster the renewable energy sector. There was a time when we were world leaders. We still are world leaders in innovation, but no longer in commercialisation or development.

The government should abandon its plans to expand the nuclear industry in Australia. Just because we have 40 per cent of the world’s known uranium deposits, it does not mean it is safe or smart to dig it up, enrich it or send it off to become an uncertain and possibly destructive end product, damaging the environment in the process.